To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down
to the roots of the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for
a description of Dr. Shlessinger's left ear. Holmes's ideas of
humour are strange and occasionally offensive, so I took no
notice of his ill-timed jest--indeed, I had already reached
Montpellier in my pursuit of the maid, Marie, before his message
came.

I had no difficulty in finding the ex-servant and in learning all
that she could tell me. She was a devoted creature, who had only
left her mistress because she was sure that she was in good
hands, and because her own approaching marriage made a separation
inevitable in any case. Her mistress had, as she confessed with
distress, shown some irritability of temper towards her during
their stay in Baden, and had even questioned her once as if she
had suspicions of her honesty, and this had made the parting
easier than it would otherwise have been. Lady Frances had given
her fifty pounds as a wedding-present. Like me, Marie viewed
with deep distrust the stranger who had driven her mistress from
Lausanne. With her own eyes she had seen him seize the lady's
wrist with great violence on the public promenade by the lake.
He was a fierce and terrible man. She believed that it was out
of dread of him that Lady Frances had accepted the escort of the
Shlessingers to London. She had never spoken to Marie about it,
but many little signs had convinced the maid that her mistress
lived in a state of continual nervous apprehension. So far she
had got in her narrative, when suddenly she sprang from her chair
and her face was convulsed with surprise and fear. "See!" she
cried. "The miscreant follows still! There is the very man of